Breakable Dogs
by Libertine Past
Summary: A tribute/sequel to MandaPanda2's "Persuasion," in Cole's POV. Driven to torturous distraction when he finds out Gregory and Olivia have reconciled, Cole conducts an innocent experiment. In the aftermath, he stands to lose more than he ever imagined.
1. Kill the Damn Lights

Disclaimer: All characters (unless otherwise specified) belong to Aaron Spelling, E. Duke Vincent, Gary Tomlin, NBC, et al and are used here strictly for non-profit entertainment purposes.

Rating: PG18

Genre: Humor/Drama/Angst

Spoilers: "Episode 94"

Summary: I'm the bell that rings everytime she's fed.

* * *

**_April 27, 1997_**

**_Cole_**

Living in this motel makes me want to grow a tiny mustache and bet on greyhound races. None of this will help my image. Couldn't exactly hurt it, either.

"Wait 'til you get an earful of this," Caitlin says, flopping on the palmy comforter. "You want to know the real reason my father called off the police?"

"The Unabomber suddenly became available?"

"Uh, no," she laughs. "I shouldn't be gossiping girl talk, but it's so funny. Mom said _she_ was the one who stopped him. Two words: feminine, wiles."

Cold moisture lines the back of my neck. "Excuse me?"

"C'mon, hon, I think you know what I mean. Mom fought manhunt with manhunt, and Daddy surrendered. I guess his police statement against you spontaneously combusted from the heat."

Tense, mirthless laughter shudders through my chest, until it turns into a cough. "Wow," I strain against my balled hand, "okay. That's a little disturbing."

"Maybe so, but we all won in the end. We're together, and their smiles were a mile wide last night at Grenadine's. Way too genuine for forced civility. A separate dessert must've been riding on that dinner."

"Persuasive," I mutter.

She slaps my thigh. "Yep, there's no denying it. Every time your name gets brought up at One Ocean, Barry White might as well come bursting through the French doors. Who would've thought you'd end up strengthening their relationship? You've gone from a bone of contention to...a boning concession," she giggles.

It should be something to chuckle about, only it doesn't happen that way. I guess I never really had to stare down the fact that they reconciled, at least not like this. There's a bitter, empty tooth socket taste in my mouth.

Olivia and I were lovers.

"Caitlin, enough, okay? Are you really that bent on your parents sticking it out, no matter how insane the means to the end is?"

"Look, they're not conventional, but we don't have to understand what makes them happy. The happier they are, the more they'll leave us alone. If she wants to put on a flying trapeze act to calm his irrational side, go for it."

I'm sure the last thing she suspects is that this trapeze artist is swinging behind my eyes, complete with a corset leotard.

I can't say I've never had a shameful fantasy about Olivia since I found out who she was. They're just usually a lot more...nocturnal.

Like it or not, I'm a fixture in her bedroom now. Part of the equation. I am between them, and it's degrading and embarrassing and...somehow all that burning disgust is easing down into my groin.

If he only knew about the palmy bed _I _made with his wife.

OK, so I was an attentive lover who also had one paw in a cookie jar...at least until she felt like a ledge I was stuck to, steadfast, with both hands.

We were torrid and weirdly emotional. Sometimes, someone would start to laugh, and the quiet one would taste the other's laughter. We were trying to survive the terrible things that had been done to us, the only way we knew how. She would set the pace, and leave me wondering if I was the younger one at all. At the party for that Congressman, I felt like a blowdryer in water.

If you only remember one thing about me, let it be this: The bedroom part of Operation: Deschanel Jewels was never a con.

_Every time your name gets brought up at One Ocean..._

Wait a minute...

Pavlov's dog.

I'm the bell that rings every time she's fed. Eventually, the bell will make her salivate, too.

"Co-ole? Helloo?" a far-away voice says. "I hope you're not a wanted fugitive in La-La Land."

"It's so hot in here." I shoot up from the bed, wrestle the motel room window open and stick my head out. The breeze only feels like a Pomeranian's tongue. "You must be missing the central air at home."

"I'm fine. This is where I want to be," Caitlin says.

It would be so easy to lean over and zap this feeling dead in her glow. She's been insatiable lately, making up for twenty years of purity. Marking pages in magazines of new things she wants to try. Survey says: she would make 99.99999 percent of men irreversibly forget about a middle-aged alcoholic in a tiara.

Hello. My name is .00001.

I just can't handle this right now.

"I'm going to take a shower," I say.

"The Super said the hot water heater is broken. It'll be free-zing," she emphasizes.

I'm counting on it.

OK, maybe this is a bad idea. It feels like sleet is coming out of the nozzle. I put my hands against the wall, taking choppy breaths.

An escape from lustful Olivia thoughts never comes. Not that you're probably surprised by that. It all just gets colder and...nipplier.

She is up against me from behind, her breasts reacting sharply to the water. Her firm kisses along my shoulder make my nails curl down the tile. "I can't keep feeling responsible for you," I tremble.

_"Rubbish. You **know** you'll never let this go...so why don't you just try an experiment?_"

That's when a ridiculous beyond ridiculous thought enters my mind.

* * *

For the next few days, I have a crucial mission: trying to find out if Olivia is going to take a nap.

I case their house, little binoculars over my sunglassed eyes, amplifiers in my ears. On Thursday, she's poolside with Sean. She is wearing a black one-piece with a single shoulder strap, and my muscles tense in mimicry of the hugging nylon. Finally, bingo. "Thank you for the company, Cubby. I'm going upstairs to rest."

Commencing Operation: Anarchy in the UK.

I climb the trellis and slip delicately through the bedroom window. She is on top of the comforter, still in the bathing suit. I didn't bargain on that. My hands shake as I approach the bed and slide the headphones on her.

The tape in the walkman is simply this: me saying my own name over and over. First and last. Quietly, but in an accusatory way, as Gregory would.

I push play.

Cole St. John. Cole St. John. Cole St. John.

Nothing happens at first. Then her legs stiffen a little. She makes a little sigh, which grows into a deeper "Mmmm..." Her lips press together...her breathing quickens, and last of all...her nipples take shape like hand-blown crystal under her bathing suit.

It takes everything I have to restrain myself from doing a swan dive onto her.

Cole, you shitheel! What the hell are you doing?

She's keeping me with Caitlin. Keeping me out of a human pound in Czechoslovakia. Damn her methods, but I have everything I ever wanted-why am I doing a science project on Olivia's arousal?

Heavy steps pummel the stairs, from someone who must've gotten a continuance in court. Now of all times. I'm _dead._ I grab the walkman from Olivia's sleeping form and give it a pitch out the window that would make Cy Young proud. I claw my way under the bed, the frame so low to the floor it's almost impossible. There's no way the bedskirt is solid enough. He'll feel my heart in the rug through his thick shoes. He'll smell my rotten blood. It'll be over. All over.

"Olivia!" he calls out, his voice slicing through the room. "Olivia! Did you-"

I'm willing to bet his long pause is because of the one-strapped bathing suit.

"What, what, I was sleeping, you just scared the wits out of me!"

"Did you hear the latest development in our daughter's downfall? She's dropping out of UCLA and '_taking a couple of classes at Pierce_,'" he says, the last part in a spacey voice. "I thought dating that lone wolf was as bad as it could get, but _this?_ Community college? That's it! I'm putting an end to Cole St. John's horrible influence _now!_"

Oh, no. Don't stave him off the way I think you're going to, Olivia. I contemplate everything that could happen to me if she _doesn't_-the cold click of Interpol's handcuffs, being forced to sign a confession I can't read-but the protest in my head is still the same: Objection!

"I beg your pardon! _ I_ went to community college, but oh, it's not good enough for Caitlin!"

That's it, c'mon. Get riled up. Don't mate, just _checkmate. _

"We're supposed to want better things for our children, Olivia, that's what being a parent is about! Not lounging around drowning your envy of their success with a White Russian!"

_Oh_ yeah. I chew on my index knuckles with both thumbs up. He's playing the drinking card. There's no way this is going to end in sex. Not in a million years.

Her bare feet disappear as she sits down on the bed. "I'm afraid I deserved that...but please. I doubt this has to do with the boy's meddling at all. She's probably just testing out our reaction. Well, sue me, but I liked Pierce. In fact, there's...a certain shower in the gymnasium where I'd go and think about you...and learn about my anatomy...and think about you. Lather, rinse, repeat."

My jaw is on the floor and he exhales for a long time. Something could very well happen after all. Right on top of me. The_ boy. _My mouth tastes like batteries. But bless his evil soul, he's trying to resist!

"That's...encouraging, Liv, but we can't lose sight of the fact that Cole St. John-"

"Gregory..." From the velvet detour of her voice, I can tell she's lying on her side, like a pinup girl. "Forget Cole. If you call the authorities, someone will show up here...and that means I'll have to get dressed. We can't have that, now can we?"

"...You know, that bathing suit is so asymmetrical, it really accentuates how perfect _your_ symmetry is..."

"Yes, it even makes this pair look a bit larger."

"From my usual position of buried between them, it'll be hard to tell."

"So assume the position."

At least if they find my breakfast under here, they'll blame it on Spike.

I've squeezed myself into ducts that weren't as constricting as this...but nothing makes me more claustrophobic under here than listening to them. Her moans aren't as much luxury as they are shock. They've been married over twenty years and he's finding ways to take her by complete, quaking surprise. The sounds map out a constellation of her body in my head as they grow stronger.

I press my forehead into the rug. This is so wrong, but no matter what, I still got her here. The monster under the bed has become part of the foreplay.

* * *

After that close call, I'm trying to forget this fixation on Olivia's...tactics.

Caitlin and I spend warm days doing all the things normal young guys are supposed to do with normal young girls.

I think.

Throwing water balloons at socialites off the rooftops of the strip. Laser tag at a crazy arena, shooting at each other's infrared hearts.

We go to the grotto to try _Cosmopolitan_'s page 43. "Let's pretend you _did_ kidnap me," she whispers in my ear. "You brought me here to kill me but you fell in love instead."

Oh God. She _is_ Gregory and Olivia's daughter.

Our melded shadows flicker on the wall of the cave. We're a perfect scene right now, a perfect rhythm.

But all I keep thinking about is finding Olivia in this rocky darkness. _"Let me look at you, and see what a knight in shining armor looks like," _she said. Well, I can tell you what one _doesn't_ look like: a little dog in crumpled aluminum foil. I can't protect her from Gregory...I can only lick the tears off her face.

I'm struggling to stay afloat in this clay and sand. Just like the sound of the tide here, Olivia is in my head and I can't get her out. I think of the strangest things. The whites of her eyes. A Statue of Liberty in her likeness, a bottle of Dom Pérignon for a torch. This is how it is.

* * *

The next day, I call her. I'd love to lay it on hard, and tell her this game will never save her Punch and Judy show of a marriage. But like my grandmother always says, you can attract more flies with martyrdom than with vinegar.

"Hullo?" she answers.

"Olivia, hey. It's Cole."

_You've got a massive nerve, calling my mo-buyle phone like this! _Bet that's what she would've said before there was instant sex at the whisper of my name. Now, nothing but pleasantry. "Oh...h-how are you...?"

Just like butter. "Fine. I'm sorry for calling your cell-"

"No, it's quite alright. Is evrathing okay?"

"It's fine. I just wanted to talk with you...in private."

"...Alright...how about the grotto in ten minutes?"

The grotto! I cover my phone and snort with laughter. I hear static when I put it back up to my ear, but realize it's my heartbeat blitzing my head from the g-word. "Well, actually I'm in the middle of an errand."

"All I hear is whirring, are you in a launderette or something?"

"Yeah. It's a first, I'll admit. The most work I've ever had to pay somebody to do myself."

"Caitlin can have Rose wash the clothes here, you know. It's really no bother at all, she's still welcome to-"

"Nope, nope. We're sticking to our guns here in the real world. Taking our self-reliance all the way."

"Oh, well excuse _me_, Mr. Ralph Waldo Emerson."

My smile almost snaps my phone shut. It's time to get back to nature alright.

* * *

The laundromat is in Huntington Beach and tumbleweed deserted. The bell on the door jingles to reveal Olivia in her white suit from the night we met. How about that...she suddenly can't remember it having any bad connotations. Score one for the unconscious mind. "It's hot as blazes in here."

Stimulating, isn't it? I wipe my brow, folding a huge pile meticulously. "Ah, it's not bad. I really want to make sure all of Caitlin's clothes get clean. She has a job interview she's really looking forward to tomorrow, and I know how many times she'll change outfits. The one option that isn't there could spell certain disaster."

"That's kind of you. You seem...very happy."

"You sound a little surprised at that."

"It's just different seeing you so domesticated." As in _animal. _She paces a little, arms folded. She slips off her blazer, a sleeveless top underneath. "It's nauseatingly hot in here, could you please get to what you wanted to talk about?"

"Look...I don't know how you're keeping Gregory off our backs, but I appreciate it. I know it must take a lot out of you, hearing him scream about me day in and day out. Cole St. John this and Cole St. John that. My name and my face infecting every single facet of your life. It must be hell. I'll repay you in any way I can."

She inches closer. "All I ask is that you keep our secret."

"Buried. I mean...that's not to say I'm good at erasing things from my head. Never have been."

"Why not?" she asks quietly.

"...even erasers leave marks." Our eyes linger for a moment. "I'm sorry to babble on like this...I've got a lot on my mind. Which shirt would Gregory find less Cole St. John-ish?" I ask, holding up polos. "Or is the one I've got on okay, as long as I don't raise my arms?" I run a hand down my wet face.

"Cole...you're acting very strangely. Caitlin would be so cross with me if I just stood here and did nothing. Skip the wash and go home-it's an inferno in here! You're flush, you're...panting."

I rub the back of my neck and keep folding. "No, it's okay...I really have to finish this. It would be so Cole St. John of me to blow it off."

"You're going to give yourself heatstroke folding her blouses?" She blots my forehead with a sock. "This is my fault. You're losing your mind trying to be perfect under threats of extradition! I haven't done anathing you should be thanking me for. I'm self-serving and desperate and all it feels like is stolen moments in a vast sea of failure!" she breaks out with at a mile a minute.

I look at her blankly. "Another day in paradise at One Ocean?"

She bites her lip. "Never you mind." She rips a bottle of Evian out of her purse and holds it to my temple, my eyes drifting closed. That's it, Olivia. Show how valuable that community college nursing degree is. I feel the bottle touch my lips. "Drink," she says. "Go on, take it!"

I put my hand over hers and drink, sighing with satisfaction as the water goes down. I watch her as we put the empty bottle down on the metal table, belly to belly...slippery hands still joined by the oppressive heat. "Thank you, Olivia."

Her icy eyes scan me up and down faster than I can follow them, her mouth falls open slowly. "You're..."

The "welcome" never comes, but it's fully implied.

She throws her arms around me and ransacks my mouth. Aggressively. Part of me doesn't even believe this is happening. I finally succeeded at something since I came to this godforsaken town. I proved that her plan to keep things peachy with Gregory would blow up in her face, literally! Ivan Pavlov, I'm going to dig you up and hug your corpse!

OK...so maybe this is a little heavier than winning a bet with myself.

I'm completely, hopelessly punch-drunk happy that her lips are taking over mine.

I take it slowly, second by second, and she softens. Her small cries soothe my parched throat. I try to make her forget that she's trying to forget this. She goes limp, dangling like a pendant, my arms becoming support for her to stand.

She thrashes away, clenching her hand over her lips. "...Of _all _the...!" she moans into her hand. "How could I have done that? How could you _let me_?"

"-Well I don-? How d-w-what was I supposed to do, beat you off with a hanger?"

"Yes! I was psychotic to even _think!_-And _you!_ That was hardly the kiss of an ambushed man just _going with it!"_

"Why not?"

"As if you don't know? I felt it, Cole." She looks up slowly, her eyes glinting with sadness. "It was too honest to stand."

"...Olivia, I...I didn't mean-"

"Yes, you did," she shivers, "but I'm at a loss to comprehend it. You have nothing to gain from me. Nothing!"

I stand there, sweaty and ridiculous, the infant who was mesmerized by ceiling fans the same year she was touching herself to Gregory in the shower. Her three-night stand, traumatized for life from what I heard under that bed. My name is Cole St. John, and strike me down for this...but I'm an Oliviaholic.

"Please don't try to understand it..." I sigh, my thumbs tracing her cheeks. "Just go with it."

The kiss feels like the oxygen mask I woke up to after a Prague hotel fire, jewelry raining from my pockets every time the gurney hit a bump. There's so much grief entwined with this revival. Everything about us is wrong...everything except this.

She pulls my shirt over my head, and her fingers climb one rib at a time. I feel her bury a small sob against my neck, and it whirls into a starved kiss down my jugular. I lift her up and balance her on the running washing machine, my secret thirst in luring her here, and_ s_he moans in response to the sensation. I pull her close, trying to guard her constantly fugitive happiness. I wrench her shirt and bra to the side, and just like I wanted to do the day of the infamous bathing suit, I coax her nipple into my mouth.

She holds on for dear life to the back of my head, while I culture the pearl. "Co..." she breathes, the "l-e" gone, but it's enough to make me glow with pride under thickening sweat. The lights start humming and flickering. "...I'll only be...your undoing..." she struggles to say.

"I"m counting on it," I whisper. I could stay like this for hours, tasting the way she unravels. She's so sensitive it's killing _me._ "Oh, Liv."

I realize in a nanosecond, from the way her skin becomes unyielding, that this was a very wrong thing to say.

It's hard not to shorten her name to that one loaded word at a time like this...but I've never heard anyone call her that but _him._

"Cole, stop." I take a stomach-wrenching drop to earth from the tone of her voice, addressing the_ boy._ "We can't! This is pain magnetized to pain. It's completely irrational!" She claws her clothes back into place.

"_I'm_ thinking," I shudder, pressing my chest to hers. "I am!"

She closes her eyes. "Cole. Your trousers are _vibrating._ You're most certainly _not_ thinking!-" She trembles to a pause, hand to mouth. "...oh god...I think I'm going to throw up."

"Oh, spare me the diversion-" I begin, but her pale face speaks a thousand words. "-Shit, you're dead serious!" I gather her up and carry her out the back door. "C'mon, fresh air, here we go." The breeze hits us in the alley immediately. I press my lips to her forehead. "It's _way_ too hot in there. You okay? Better?"

She takes a deep breath. "No, no. It wasn't the heat, it's _you_. Your sweat smells like mayonnaise!" She squirms out of my arms, her hand still clamped to her mouth. "...oh dear...OK...OK. It passed."

I look down, shaking my head. "Wow. There's no such thing as subtlety with you, is there? You think you can take it down a notch from utter humiliation?" I turn hard to go back in the building and slam right into the brick wall, hearing her gasp. "...I can manage that all by myself..." I strain into my hand, pinching my nose as I storm inside.

"Wait," she sighs, following me. "I'm sorry, that came out the wrong way!"

"How about when you jumped on me, Olivia, did that come out the wrong way, too? I think it gave a whole new meaning to _hold the mayo!_" I yank my shirt back on and start piling clothes into the laundry basket.

"OH, alright! On second thought, let's just spew whatever pops into our heads, Cole, maybe this is the only time we ever _can!_ That doesn't mean-will you _stop_ tossing those garments around like clown handkerchiefs? What are you doing?"

"Hightailing my unbearable Hellmann's stench _out of here_ and pretending this never happened!"

"Oh, bollocks! _I'm_ the only one who's been trying like hell to do that! You're conflicted and confused and running away with Cailtin because you're ashamed, not to mention_ terrified _that you have feelings for _me too!"_

The words, out loud, in satin English, freeze me solid. She even seems taken aback that they came out of her own mouth. There's nothing in this space but the machines whirring, and that red piece of scrap meat in my chest grinding away.

"...I...I ca..." Her crystal eyes make my throat close, and only drive home why I need to finish. "...fine. You fascinate me. Maybe it's completely seventh grade, and I-I don't have superhuman control over it like someone else we know. Alright? Satisfied?"

Nothing leaves her mouth for a while but pronounced breathing. "Then I'll make things easy for you. We can't be alone. Ever. Not even for one to get water and one to throw something out in the same kitchen."

"Oh, that's a _great_ solution, Olivia. You've secured peace in our time! Just like your other brilliant strategy...what was it? To hold back Gregory's offensive with a sex bribe?"

Her expression wilts. "_How_ do you know about-?...Oh, Caitlin," she mutters under her breath. "She can open up and tell you anathing...do you know how rare that is for her? The last thought to ever cross her mind is that you'd be jealous."

"Or that I'm the one who protects you from Gregory whenever your world falls apart."

"Your callow heart is trying to understand something you never will."

"What don't I understand? How _happy_ you are because you're sleeping with him as a ruse? He'll drive you right back into the grotto again, and I'll be waiting there when it happens."

"Then you'll be waiting at high tide." She holds my face in one hand, the dimple there caving to her touch like a puncture wound. "It's much too dangerous. By the time you realize that, Cole, you'll have drowned." She grabs her purse and blazer and runs out the laundromat door. The bell jangles happily as I stand there in indescribable mourning.

* * *

Needless to say, I don't feel any satisfaction in proving my stupid theory. So I gave her a hypnotic suggestion to fool around, and she took the bait. Who cares? Not her, that's for sure.

But...even though it was in a pitying, Quasimodo sort of way...she gave me water.

I spend the rest of the day on an H20 bender. I buy five bottles from the convenience store, fill cups from the whining tap at the motel. I drink from public fountains, not even caring if my mouth hugs the spigot.

At least I have the memory of my name on her lips...but it feels like listening to a beautiful English news anchor talk about a coal mining disaster, and only hearing what I want to. "...Cole...a blazing fire...within minutes...the shaft...unbelievable!"

Let the drowning begin, boy.

* * *

Caitlin laces her hands with excitement. "You're looking at the new lead singer of Screaming Kitty!" OK, so I neglected to tell Olivia that the "job interview" was an audition for a band.

"That is...something!" I didn't think she'd get picked. Not for lack of talent, just...I mean, her last gig was singing the national anthem for the Angels of Anaheim. I didn't think she was exactly "Screaming Kitty" material.

This is my comeuppance, that's for sure. Find me a guy who'd be thrilled that his girlfriend is the figurehead on a pirate ship.

I know I have no right to be nauseated. The only gnawing sensation I should have is guilt... but maybe I don't even know what it is. All I've ever known is how to live moment to moment. This is the first time any of my moments have intersected so damn hard.

She puts her arms around my neck. "Baby, they love me. They even gave me a stage name: Lolita Black. It's so edgy, isn't it? I always had it in me to do this, but before I met you, I never would've pursued it."

"Oh, Caitlin," I sigh, fumbling for her mouth with mine. Our timing is completely off. I feel like I'm sinking and can't reach her, and I smell totally rank. Be normal. Just be normal. Stop wondering if Olivia hates your guts. Scraped, raw, dodgeball embarrassment, that's all she ever makes you feel. And somehow...painfully alive.

Lolita Black bites my lower lip. "Tonight, I'm gonna show you how a rock star does it. Trash this room. Leave you sore."

She gets a little edgier every day. This love story makes us want to be completely different people, which doesn't make much sense. She wants to be the wild child now, and I want to be the impossibility of Cole Stevens. Raised on hard work, honesty and apple brown betty. Destined to marry the girl next door instead of haunt the lady in the window.

* * *

Ah, yes. My old standby, the long corridor dream. This time, there's a door at the end with a frosted glass window that reads: "Guidance Counselor."

I open the door to Del Douglas at a desk, his feet up on it. Smoking a cigar. "It's about time, Little Slugger! Sit down, you look old enough to need a shot of somethin' strong!" he says, filling a glass with red liquid. "Shame I don't have a rubber nipple to put on this for ya," he cackles. "This is such an honor! I'm a big fan of yours-my own protégé, no less. You're welcome, by the way."

I sit in a chair front of his desk. "You want me to_ thank_ you. For kidnapping me."

"C'mon, Coleslaw. You can't hold the seventies to today's moral standards. Hell, I knew people who would've swapped you for a pound of hash and smoked the whole thing before your next bottle!" he laughs. "Besides, _kidnappin' _is such a harsh word. So many negative connotations. We formed a _bond_ on that car trip to Atherton, you an' me. You spat up all over my new leisure suit, and I got you to sleep with the heartbeat of my fat gold pocket watch. Even changed one of those nasty meconium diapers. Looked like a potted plant fell over in that thing!"

I cover my eyes hard. "Oh God, I really don't want to hear about this."

"It's the plain truth. It was a fatherly moment for me, takin' you in that chariot to a fine upbringin' in high society."

"And an endless black pit in my chest."

"Yes! And that, my boy, was the secret ingredient for your success. That salivatin' hunger. The drive for the conquests, to leave the weaker sex in unadorned ruin! I couldn't be more proud of you, son." He leans over, his voice going menacing, the cigar tip red as sunset. "But somethin's gone terribly wrong with you. _Obedience._"

"You don't know anathing about my life."

He makes a curdled face. "Did you just say _ana_-thing?"

I bang my forehead purposely on the desk and slug back the liquor shot in front of me.

"Not good, kiddo, pickin' up the ol' Paddington patter. Absorbin' her into your skin. Olivia Richards turns boys into men...and men into dogs."

"Well, what do you think I should do, oh Captain, my Captain?" I groan.

"I would get down to the nurse's office and do somethin' about _that._"

I look down and my shirt is soaked through with dark crimson. "No..." I cage my hands over it and it only gets darker. "No!"

"The heart is a worthless trinket, boy! Just let it burn out," he spits. _"Kill the damn lights!"_

I shoot up in bed, gasping. Sweating mayonnaise. Caitlin sleeps like the dead, just like her mother, and doesn't even stir. I bury my face in the pillow. I can say what I want about Del, but he took better care of me than I've ever taken of myself.

* * *

Miserable, I sit in the Java Web, drinking coffee that singed my tongue and tastes like nothing now. I want to peel my skin off, sprint out of here, and swim to Catalina Island with my guts showing. Suddenly I'm possessed to do something else I've never done before: type my father's name into a search engine.

Armando Deschanel 

_Did you mean _**Ardara, Donegal?**

While I stare at pictures of Ireland, I contemplate this: Is leaving her the reason he disappeared off the face of the earth?

Why can't I stop wallowing in what I don't have, and think of everything I do? A mother who's everything I imagined one to be, who'd cradle all two-hundred pounds of me in her arms if she could. A big sister who wants to make up for years of not beating people up for me. A beautiful girlfriend who would eat my scabs just to feel my presence.

Cole, by most people's standards, you're one lucky shit.

A skinny shadow falls over me. "Now _that_ is amazing. Somebody taught a knuckle-walking gorilla how to surf the web!"

"What do you want, Connors?"

He sits down across from me, his black hair flopping in his eye. "Oh, nothing. Just making sure you don't grab a virgin and climb a tall building."

"I didn't kidnap my girlfriend, OK? How did you even hear about that, from the police scanner on your toilet?"

"Doesn't matter if they melted down my badge, St. John. I'm a well-informed and frankly concerned citizen. Your record is pretty extensive. Grand larceny...fraud..._...laundering."_

He slaps down a pile of black and white photos of Olivia and me entangled on top of the washing machine.

He riffles them so they look like an animated flip book. My brain can't even wake up the muscles in my face to _make_ a horrified expression.

"What's the matter, Cole? Never seen this cute new commercial where the Snuggle Bear tries to stuff somebody's wife?"

An unintelligible response on my part.

"Let me guess, you tripped and fell face first into her bra, and she just-so-happened to land on a giant coin-op sex toy? That about right? Hell, these pictures capture the intent, the premeditation so perfectly, it doesn't even matter that she walked out on you. Although I _was_ looking forward to the spin cycle."

"Wh-what are you, some kind of sick perv?"

"Oh-ho! I'm the perv? _I_ was capturing nature through the panes of a public establishment. I'm an artist. My mastery of light and shadow is highly sought after, especially by one particular client. You might know him as the Godfather."

"He hired you to follow me..."

"Oooh, _very good_. I have to admit, I thought I'd catch you doing something _way_ tamer than this. Strippers, hookers, the whole rack of Spice Girls at once. But oh, I really hit the_ motherload_ with this one. Question is...how do you stop Gregory from finding out-and I specify Gregory, 'cause your little blond safety catch is almost irrelevant at this point-and how soon can you start asking 'how high' when I tell you to jump?"

I clench my teeth behind my lips, trying not to lose it. "How do I know you didn't already tell him everything?"

"Uhh, if that were the case, would you be sitting around sipping a latté and looking at pictures of sheep grazing, or crammed in a running dryer?"

My poker face starts to falter. "I'll just tell Paula you're blackmailing me. She'll throw you in a cell so fast-"

"Aw, you think you've got connections now? You gonna tell your nice little ready-made family what I've got on you? If there's one thing that makes Paula go stone cold crazy, it's a cheater like her no-account daddy...and we know how well you take rejection," he smiles, holding up a picture of my face after Olivia left the laundromat. "Listen, Cole...I'm really a decent guy. I'm down with a little browsing at the Gap. You know, the _Age Gap?_ I would totally do Mrs. Richards into the morrow, she is one hot toddy. But I always wondered..when I stick my tongue down her throat, will I get a contact buzz?"

My hands shoot out and wrench him hard by the collar.

He just smiles. "Oh, did I hit a nerve? I knew it. How sweet."

"You're psychotic_._"

"At least I don't need to make creepy subliminal message tapes to get laid," he grins. "Really, what is up with _that? _I find some odd things in people's bushes. _Hedges,_ I should say, in case your mind was going anywhere else."

"Why don't you go dig around for a_ life!"_

"Why don't you just worry about your own, St. Blown. And by the way, you're not the only one about to get erased here. There's no telling what Greg would do to _both_ of you if he saw this little lint fire." He holds up a picture of Olivia. "Imagine what these vibrant eyes would look like when they're pleading for air. Fixed on the ceiling while they go completely still...lights out. _Fare thee well, Cole...these violent delights have violent ends," _he chokes in a terrible English accent.

I let him go, my stomach and lungs filling with solid ice. I'm robbed of words for a long time, staring into the photo.

"...what do I have to do...?" I barely hear myself asking.

"Good boy. That's exactly right, it's what you _have_ to do, so your English setter can live a long, healthy life with Gregory. You're going to visit the police station, break into the evidence locker, and get me the Deschanel jewels."

My face says it all and he barks, "Ah-ah! Not a 'but,' not a _word._ Every precious stone present and accounted for. You've got forty-eight hours...more than enough time for the best in the business. Otherwise, it's showtime, immediately followed by closing credits."

He holds up a photo of Olivia and me and rips it straight down the intersection of our lips, and as if Connors is some sort of voodoo shaman, I instantly taste blood. I'll do _anat_hing to pull off this heist. Cut open a metal grate with my teeth. Swim under the station in an underground river, breathing through a straw.

It might work. It just might work.

**...to be continued...**


	2. The Persistence of Memory

**Chapter 2: The Persistence of Memory**

* * *

**May 2, 1997**

_**47 hours left**_

_**Cole**_

I have about twenty aliases, but Cole St. John was always my favorite. When you pick your own name, you feel like you have control over your fate.

When you name yourself after an island, sometimes there's no way off it.

I burst into my motel room and stand like an iced rod against the closed door, determination dissolving into numbness. Connors and his pictures had to be just a bad dream.

As if I can't feel the proof burning a hole in my pocket? I pull out half of the torn photo he left behind. Olivia kissing no one, her lips jagged, the very tip of her nose missing.

What if he sends this to Gregory as an appetizer?

My fist pounds the cheap particle board desk. Don't think about that, don't think about _anything_ but the heist. Get in the zone. Remember the zone?

But all I see when I close my eyes is irrepressible beauty, in a place you'd never expect to find it. A place that smelled like bleach, where we were surrounded by white linen that never even touched our skin.

She pressed her thighs harder into the rumbling machine the more I doted on her breast. Perfume ran down her neck while I built myself from her gasps, her unfinished words. You turned to me now, and you'll turn to me again, I thought. There is no "what we had," only what we **are.**

Until that little pet name slipped out, that _one second_ reminder of him...

For God's sake, I can't keep reliving everything that got me into this mess in the first place!

I thrash open the drawer, pull out a paper and pen and try to remember everything I can about the SBPD evidence room. It stared me in the face all the times I visited Elaine. My handwriting is illegible. Was there keypad entry outside the door you could bluelight for fingerprints? I close my eyes and only starved blankness faces me. Think, Cole. Think. She'll never know it, but she's counting on you. Godddamit,_ think!_

I bury my head in my arms on the desk, struggling to fill little sandwich bag lungs. This isn't working, but God, it has to work. Olivia, how could I have been so selfish? I needed you so badly, but only a fraction as much as I need to pull this off.

My cell phone rings in my pocket and I almost shoot out of my shirt. I exhale hard and put it to my ear. "Hello?"

"Having fun yet, bitch?" Eddie asks.

"How did you get this number?"

"What part of _private investigator_ do people not understand? You got a progress report, or is a certain NC-17 errand gonna start shooting out of Gregory's fax machine, post haste?"

"It's only been an hour!"

"You had better deliver, Cole, or Gregory's gonna have the chauffeur drop his wife in the desert with a flask full of nail polish remover. It would be fun to see just how Betty Ford things get when that raging thirst sets in, not that it matters. I'm sure the vultures will find her even tastier than you do."

I've gotta hand it to him. He's made an art form out of painting an indelible picture in my head. I close Olivia's picture in the desk drawer, the only act of protection I'm capable of right now. I finally scrape words out of my narrowing throat. "Look, Connors...I'll get you those jewels even if I take a shot in the process. I'll meet you with the briefcase, my fingers stuck in my carotid, and a smile."

"Now that's _exactly_ the kind of dedication I saw through my magic lens. The camera doesn't lie. You know, you're really _not_ the colossal shitbag everybody thinks you are, Colostomy...but the only person who's ever gonna know it is some millionaire recluse far away from here. Oh, yeah. That would be me!"

*Click.*

I fling my scribbled notes off the desk, craving water like crazy. The heist. The goddamn plan.

A thick drawl rises into the silence, singing_._

_*She was a-married when they first met, soon to be divorced. He helped her out of a jam I guess, but he used a little too much force!*_

Del is lying on the bed, hands behind his head, boots all over the comforter.

"What is this?" I groan. "You gonna haunt me during the day, too?"

"I live inside you, pup. Like God, only better."

"Alright...fine. I'm up for a little therapy session with a figment of my imagination. What sanity do I have to lose? I can't believe I'm saying this...but you were right. I should've stayed away from her."

"Aw, that was just my envy talkin,' Colster. I would sell my soul for just five more minutes of that sweet cream scone, I tell you what."

My head returns to the hollow desk. "How 'bout you _don't._"

"How 'bout you cut the Mission Impossible drama over this evidence room? There must be _somebody_ in a position of power you can sleep with to shake this shakedown! The Martinez girl, the secretary. Probably has access anywhere. The Cole _I _know could get her to hand over the Deschanel jewels in her lacy little panties."

"Oh my God. How stupid am I? Gabi, yes!..." I envision it for about 1.5 seconds and sink down against the wall, tasting bile. "...No! We're practically related. I might as well march up to Paula right now and tell her everything! I can't."

"Oh ho! Such high morals from somebody plannin' a robbery in honor of his mistress. Olivia's tickin' clock is startin' to melt like a Salvador Dali original. Are you gonna do ANA-THING or not?"

A knock at the door slams my eyes open.

There are some things you just know. Presences that thunder. I would know if she was on the other side of solid titanium.

I stand up, feeling like the only strength flowing through me is from the firm plantation of my feet on the floor. I reach for the knob. Just get it over with, Wash Boy.

Her posture changes as the door opens, uprooting her from the hope that I might not be home. Our eyes stand there, mud underneath water. I think of her expression in the photograph when I pleasured her, her eyes open and watching. For a guilty split second I'm glad Eddie took the picture, so I can know that.

The blue was so fierce I could see it in black and white.

"A-against my better judgement," she says, "I needed to see you."

"Why?" It's the last thing I expect to say. My hands shoot out, framing her face. A gesture I can remember offering many others, but not because I really wanted to. It was to put blinders on them. It made them feel like the only woman in the world. Now that karma's had its way with me, it's an act of desperation, of grasping for a clearer image of someone's features.

I'm not sure she wants to know what's come over me, but she is completely still. "Are you alright?"

I snap myself out of it and pull away, pacing the small room as she closes the door behind her. "I'm fine."

"You look like you drank a barrel of espresso."

Because I simultaneously want to hide you in a convent and roam your inner thigh with my mouth. These two thoughts can't share the same brain without visible tremors. Did I mention I'm probably still under surveillance? "Can you blame me? You shouldn't be here."

"I know, I know it's bizarre of me, after I railed against our...quite _public_ lapse of thought the other day, to show up uninvited at your motel room..."

_Everywhere_ we're alone feels like a motel room to me, Olivia. Better still, a grotto. The same waves in my head, the same whispering rocks. Turned away from her, I feel her cloudless blue burning two holes in my back.

"I'll get right to the point. I-I never...I didn't...sometimes-"

"Well, that's a solid stance, if I ever heard one."

"Oh, will you just give me a second...?" Her long breath and a drop in my stomach later, "The reason I applied some extra...persuasion to stop Gregory's manhunt was because...I thought if you were backed into a corner, you'd release the wolves, so to speak."

"...and now?"

"...after feeling the...intensity of...I-I know now that you'd never do that to me." Her voice dies down. "Even at the expense of your freedom."

Still with my back to her. "Never."

"Cole, will you please turn around?"

I do, and see exactly what I'm afraid of. The look in her eyes makes me want to deadbolt the door.

"Maybe I knew that all along..." she goes on, "and I did it as much to protect you as to bolster my marriage...I don't know. I never intended to use you as a tie to bind me to Gregory...it just happened that way."

It's the Prague fire all over again, the same feeling of a hundred lit cigarettes stuffed in my mouth.

"Somehow, you always lead me back to him. I blew evrathing out of proportion that night in the grotto, I know that now...talking to him as if he were dead! If you hadn't come...my clothes would've billowed with water and mud like the desolate Ophelia herself."

Olivia Death Image # 3, and it wasn't even from Connors. Can I catch a break today? I feel myself inside that scene, inside her body, holding my breath for her, knowing it would be a long time before it caused me any pain."Please don't put that picture in my head."

"I am so...thankful to you, Cole...for the second chance you've given me. But I can't mistake that for something else. Let my gratitude, my payment to you be _Caitlin_, free and clear of interference. I know you love her. You want to love her."

"...maybe I love her blindness to everything that's wrong with me."

"Why would that bother you?"

"Most of the time it inspires me...and at the same time...it drives me crazy that not one person can figure out that you and I were lovers."

"And how would they ever know unless we flat out said it?"

"The way we move at One Ocean says it all. Plainly." I come closer, her mouth opening quickly to say something that never comes. "Twisting and angling and sidestepping around. Jerking our hands back, avoiding the tiniest contact at all costs. All the while, with eyes of starving little orphans. Normal acquaintances don't do things like that, Olivia. Not by a long shot."

"Well. I'm sure this will make your chest seize with a heart attack from pure, harrowing shock, but yes. I'm attracted to you. _Egad!_ With powers of deduction like that, you could outshine Ricardo Torres!"

"So that was it. Sloppy mammal attraction. That was what you felt in the laundromat,_ that_ was what made you see I'd go to prison over selling you out?"

"What do you want from me? An engagement announcement in the newspaper? To meet my dead parents? Why don't we just spread out on a beach blanket and have at it, Cole, in plain view of the whole world!"

"How about on a washing machine?"

"Dammit!" She pounds my chest, but the fists melt into flat palms. "Stop saying it! Don't bring me back there, I can't! That infernal whirring and whirring and pressure and heat and you...breathing me..."

She finally looks up, and a hopeless kiss grows between us. She rises on her toes, even though we're about the same height, into new reaches of my mouth. Long growls leave one throat and scratch another. This is a kiss for a downpour on the roof, and despite the sun, I hear it.

Never breaking the kiss, she takes my wrists and brings my hands to her stomach, making a high sound. I try to slide my hands up to where all my laundromat dreams live, but she slides them back to her center. Inside me, a bubble drifts between the darkest lines on a level. I glide my fingernails so lightly across her stomach, and her kisses deepen until my desire is painful. "I need you," she says, but her voice is weak with something other than need.

"Olivia..."

"Darling, I'm...so dizzy..."

She called me darling. Something has to be wrong. She starts to sway, her eyes draining, until they close.

She parts her lips, fumbling for my arms as she plunges to the floor, and I fall right with her.

"No!" I feel my mouth moving, but the words seem dubbed in another heavy language. "Olivia no, come back, come back to me, I'm so sorry," I moan, as if the ultimate consequence of our actions is flashing before me. "Olivia, please?" I hold her head up, desperate for a rush of air in my ear, rocking her back and forth with relief when it comes. "That's it, don't give me a heart attack today, not now." I'm gripping her hand so hard, trying to transfuse stubbornness into stubbornness. "It's okay, you save your strength to yell at me later. I'm gonna get you some help, okay? You just hold on, Ollie."

And just like that, my own pet name is born. It falls out of my lips like it was always there, waiting. I'll never have 'Liv,' but I can improvise.

As if I chose to settle at the Seabreeze for some underlying premonition, South Bay Hospital is a stone's throw from the motel. I carry her there, whispering things she won't remember.

* * *

_**46 hours left**_

Something stops me from calling anyone in the family as I'm waiting, pacing. An eerie feeling of discretion. It's not just because of her questionable whereabouts when it happened, but something else I couldn't explain if I tried.

"Cole?" I hear in the distance, but it doesn't reach me. "Mr. St. Croix?" the nurse groans.

Yeah, I know. Another lie, another Virgin Island.

I finally look up, and she waves me over to her station with the demeanor of a pit bull. "I'm Nurse Stacy. I have good news...for non-staff members, at least. The Diva is upright and giving orders."

The smile that infects my face is a sharp contrast to her blankness. "That's s-"

"So you _are_...?" she prompts grumpily.

Smile over.

"...her...dry cleaner. She collapsed at my place of business." This is ridiculous.

"Well. Look at you, a local hero," she deadpans. "We should call the Sentinel."

"No! Please, I-I'm just a humble everyman, that won't be necessary."

"Mhm. Anyway, you came to the right place. Olivia Cole is actually a new patient here."

"Olivia who?"

"Olivia You. That's kinda odd."

"...Oh. Right, I noticed that on her...dry cleaning ticket." Ridiculous beyond ridiculous.

She looks around and sniffs. "Is it just me, or do you smell mayonnaise?"

I bury my head in the station. "It's _me_, okay? The French invented it, apparently we also sweat it, can we please get back to my customer's condition?" my mouth motors.

Her face is frozen in pure astonishment. "Yeeeah, anyhow, we're going to keep her here for further monitoring for about an hour. Fainting spells are very common with fluctuating blood pressure, but she and the baby are fine."

Now it's _my_ turn to be deathly pale, and possibly be admitted. The white florescent lights start to smolder. The floor slants. The world crashes into a shameful, vulnerable, whirling naked montage of my every lip-biting, curse-moaning, unprotected climax from a few months before.

"The_ baby?_...I uhm...I'm surprised that never came up in our weekly banter-"

"Oh, put your eyes back in your head and cut the crap, Boytoy. Your leash is showing."

I hang my head. "Well played," I mutter.

"I guess congratulations are in order, Miracle Whip. Your vinegar reached the egg."

Oh. God. "...Will you excuse me for a second, I think I'm about to have projectile sympathetic morning sickness." And I run.

I burst through the bathroom door and grip the sink, but the only thing that throws up is my mind. It all comes together. Hard.

It was a hormonal pregnant woman who pounced on me in the laundromat that day.

The over-sensitive breasts. The nausea from my eau de mayo.

The way she moved my hands to her stomach in my room. That high sound she made, like a metal detector that found something.

This is my baby. It has to be. Why else would she be getting care under a fake name?

I kneel at the sink like an altar. No. Let the baby be Gregory's, my head pounds, against what surges through my heart. Please, God. Gregory will look on her with mercy if he finds out about Eddie's pictures. He'd still order a hit on me, but she'd be safe.

The room starts to spin. If Gregory sees the pictures, he'll _never_ believe the baby is his. It'll be a demon as expendable as she is.

The heist: zero percent planned.

My breath stutters through my chest. I look in the mirror and see a gray hair in the harsh florescent light, my first one at twenty two. Sticking straight up, coarse and unruly.

Time is turning into a Dali clock for three of us.

I barely have time to see her right now.

So I do.

I peer in her small room and she is sitting up on a gurney, a cup of juice in her hand. A blood pressure monitor beeping away and a fetal monitor belted to her stomach. A slight curve is apparent in her bare skin, a bump I couldn't feel in the motel under the quickness of her breathing. Protruding just enough to be a stowaway from the night we met. Just enough to be the quick, hostile takeover of Gregory's third child.

I slip through the door and she backwashes juice into the cup, eyes like saucers, unable to gather her shirt to pull it down. "Cole! Oh God, Oh God-i-it's not what you think!"

I won't see Olivia's baby take its first gulp of air, that one brief pause before it talks incessantly for life. I have to become everything I _hate_ in the next 45 hours, to preserve a world I'll never get to feel.

Walking through this door will always be frozen in time as the most devastating moment of my life...and despite it all, I laugh.

I laugh simply because she's too much sometimes. _It's not what you think?_

"I haven't any idea what could be funny about this!"

I storm in and kiss her swollen lips gently, hearing the plastic juice cup smash to the floor. "I don't know. I'm terrified, more than I could ever tell you, but you're a light. I could stay in a shark cage with your picture in it, Olivia. Broken door, broken air, wearing a lei made of fish guts. I don't know why. It's just how it is."

She shakes her head. "How can you say these things about someone who stumbled into your life drunk, humiliated herself, humiliated herself countless times more, and then gets laid up in this glorified veterinary school looking like a sow in lipstick!"

I laugh again.

"You...despicable prat! Go ahead and laugh again, I dare you, I swear I'll-!"

"What, suddenly get turned on? It always seems to wash over you right after a rant. These mood swings are the best."

"Except when they turn murderous," she growls. "For the life of me, Cole, I don't know where you come from."

"Atherton, California. Home of the rich and famous, and some kid who was dropped off screaming by Colonel Sanders."

She covers her eyes. "Cole-"

I part her hands and kiss her again, searching out a sound until a small squeak fills me. I hold her chin, finding words to include the thundering third heartbeat in the room. "Are you both okay?"

"Yes, and-I swear I just found out yesterday, I thought I was going through the change-"

"Sh-sh, no. You're okay. That's all that matters, Ollie."

"You're daft," she whispers in the shallow distance between our mouths. "You're always having to come to my rescue."

"Well...I shouldn't get any credit when it's because I spiked your blood pressure."

She caresses one dimple, leading me to wonder if they're her thumbprints. "Perhaps it was the evenness that I wasn't used to."

Before we know it, our hands are on each other's hearts. This is an organ you avoid in an affair, that you wouldn't dare rest your head against or graze for more than a second. It's too real, too sappy, too virginal. I remember Caitlin on our first night in the grotto;_"I can feel your heart beating," _she gasped. I thought,_ That's good, because otherwise you'd be a necrophiliac._

For Olivia and I, it's the most honest admission we've ever made, and as always...it's without saying a thing.

"Why did you call me Ollie?" she asks quietly.

"I don't know. It just...jumped out earlier when I was scared...and I'm keeping it."

"The way you say it with reverence...eases the fact that it sounds like the name of a senile old hound."

I sigh, a smile slipping through, only to slip away. "You know, Grandmother was right about something for once...that coming here would put the family back together. It wasn't just mine...it was this one." I reach for her belly, an anchoring movement. "This will bind you to Gregory. I guess that's what I do best."

"Cole, no. No. I said that because I'm a coward. That is _not_ your burden, it isn't fair!"

"Well, life outside of Monte Carlo usually isn't. It was time to grow up. Letting you go will grow me up a lot," I kinda laugh, brewing tears outlining it in black. I hold her stomach as I lean into her ear, about to whisper something that fades into exhaled breath. I get up and head for the door.

"Wait!" Her eyes are teeming with water. "Darling...? If the baby is yours, I know when it was conceived."

"Olivia, please don't-"

"Upstairs at the Belarus party. I forgot there was a house full of people that night. You made me feel precious and rare. If that wouldn't let a woman in the autumn of her youth create something...I don't know what would."

"Red leaves have nothing on you."

She closes her eyes and shakes her head. "Cole...if you only knew the real me...you would recoil in horror."

"I won't if you won't."

"Where are you going?"

"To save the world."

* * *

TBC...

* * *

A/N: Del's lyrics are from Bob Dylan's "Tangled Up in Blue." :)


	3. Amant Enceinte

**Chapter 3: **_**Amant Enceinte**_

I always thought that the lines in the palm of my hand ran thin. I didn't like to think about what it meant. Weaknesses I had. How long the world would keep me around.

I don't know a damn thing about palm reading, but I know that one line runs deeper since the last time I looked.

The walk from the hospital is in complete autopilot mode. My eyes are vacant, and the only thing projected in front of them is Olivia's nearing evolution. Pregnant in a hammock. More pregnant in a clawfoot tub, with me, her curves catching sunlight like an ice sculpture. The way she'd laugh the first time a leg stretched out against me through her flesh.

Hypothetically speaking.

I hold my swirling head in my hands. There was a time when the sight of a pregnant woman made me want to scrub my eyes with mechanic's soap, and now I can't take in enough air to handle the mere thought of it. I need to be with her, if only in her vicinity. Even if it's in Gregory's frozen corner of Grenadine's right under a vent, my girlfriend's hand on my thigh and Olivia's eyes at the bottom of her water glass.

She believes...if it's not his...that the baby was conceived on Belarus night. (I wish I didn't have to associate it with that Congressman's face, but it's quicker than saying 'The night she shoved me out the window to get me to leave.') February 18th. I wanted to tell her I knew she was right, wholeheartedly. Whole-_evrathing_-ly. But I didn't. I ran, because I'm running out of time.

I never needed to be Cole St. John to survive. He's damn useless under pressure.

Case in point: my mind runs off yet again, and the warm satin of her master bedroom takes over. Belarus night was about attending to everything, to things we never knew were neglected. Her cold hands, the hair-trigger birthmark on my lower hip. We were old lovers and new lovers in one, enlightened and shaking. She was in my lap and I preyed on her neck, knowing she was close.

It possessed me, for the first time, to look a woman in the eyes as we lost control.

That was when I knew there were things I wasn't experienced in at all. Gravity, for starters. I dropped to my knees. _Stay_, I told myself, but a little piece of me took that way too literally.

The wind snaps me back into the world. I look down the beach and see Caitlin and her Screaming Kitty bandmates, sitting on a blanket and passing around a bottle with a paper bag over it. She's wearing a black t-shirt torn to the cleavage. Across it, a stark white skull with cat ears and whiskers for crossbones. Microscopic cutoff shorts and knee-high boots. The girls roar with laughter. They blow smoke into the salt air, spout off indistinct curses.

I squint and twist my heel in the sand. We live in the same eleven-by-twelve room. We kissed goodbye this morning. That can't be what she was wearing...but everything before Eddie's pictures seems like another lifetime ago.

_"Boy, you've got some bad voodoo in your Midas touch since you came to Sunset Beach!" _Del chuckles. _"You turn this girl into gold, and you're lookin' more like petrified shit. Now move over, you're spoilin' the view," _he grins, gazing at the girls._ "Lo-li-ta Black. That is a Cole St. John makeover if I ever seen one."_

"Let me clue you in on something, Boss Hogg. It's Gregory's doing. She's busting out of captivity."

_"In more ways than one!" _he laughs._ "I guess the ol' Richards collar will have to be passed on to __**your**__ son. You just know it's a boy, so Greg can brand it with his own name. Unless of course you DO somethin' about it, but you won't. Yellow-bellied little mongrel."_

"Get out of my head," I shiver.

_"Now is that any way to talk to the only father who's ever been there for you? Your only confidant about Oliviagate? You're just as crazy as Lainey!"_

I clench my hands in my hair, trying to evict him. At this point, I think I'll need a neurosurgeon.

I look back at the twenty-somethings who aren't talking to their dead abductors, or aging by the minute, and I remember I'm one of them. I want to seize Caitlin in my arms, kiss her senseless, and be the best part of her new, reckless freedom...but a deep pang of guilt goes through me to the marrow. Not because of where I've been, what I've created, what I'm about to do.

It hits me that Caitlin has become the affair.

I force my spine to turn away, hunching towards the strand. That's just the icing on it all. I can't even resolve on one detail of a heist that'll save my life.

The desert image Connors taunted me with takes over. Olivia lies in the sand, her skin transparent, choking on her thirst. The nail polish remover could taste just like water if she pretended. The acetone rips through her and she has no voice to cry out in agony.

The acetone glides through the umbilical cord.

I stagger into the alley between the Java Web and the Jade Palace, a corkscrew for a windpipe. Everything that should be spurring me on is paralyzing me. What the hell am I gonna do?

What else would happen right now but my phone ringing?

I fling it open and feel a vein bulge in my neck. "What _now,_ Connors!"

The soft words I hear instead send a backdraft through my ear. "Oh, God, I _knew_ it. What have you gotten yourself into?"

"Olivia," I swallow. A few senseless utterances later, "Are those _cars_ I'm hearing in the background?"

"Did you really think I was going to stay in that triage broom closet? They did all the bloody monitoring I needed, so I checked myself out. I won't let you slink back into the shadows alone!"

"Are you out of your mi-"

"Belt up, Cole! The baby is fine- _you're_ not! I knew it from the moment I walked into your room. You were trembling, and it certainly wasn't because of my ill-fitting pants!"

"Well I-"

"And when you found out about the baby, it only got worse," she goes on, knowing I'll never find an 'edgewise' to slip into. "You kissed me like you were going to war, bounded out of the hospital, and what was I supposed to think? _Oh well?_ There have been so many moments just like this, when I stood by and did _nothing._ I won't stand still for you. Not after the things you said. Or did you forget, in typical Deschanel fashion?"

I rest my head against the brick wall, mortar crumbling on my shoulders as I sink to the ground. "I'm not gonna drag you down with me, okay?"

"_You_ drag _me _down? I've pulled you into the depths of hell, Cole, and you're still able to smile. A quite infectious one at that."

I shake my head, my sigh burning my cheeks. "Olivia...all I want is for you to be happy. That's all I've _ever_ wanted, from the first time I saw you crying in that grotto. I wanted that when I didn't even know you...nevermind now. And I know it would make you happy to...tell Gregory you're pregnant. Just do it. Send him over the moon. You won't regret it."

"I wish it were that simple. The look on his face when I've told him that news...is imprinted on my heart. But now, so is the torment on yours."

"I'll be okay."

"Well, thank you for that _prediction_, Madame Torres the bloody psychic, but that's all it is. Please just tell me what you're tangled up in, and why you thought that lowlife was calling? I'll know if you lied to me when I see you. Your sweat smells a bit tangy to a pregnant woman, keep in mind."

I guess Nurse Stacey has a special announcement to make. Kneading my brow, it takes a lie about .2242 seconds to infiltrate my brain. "Look...I owe Eddie a little money and he keeps hassling me."

"How much is a little?" Something that's rightfully yours, Olivia, I shiver. An insurance policy, the one briefcase you could leave Gregory with, that he can't shut off or transfer to the Caymans. Only that little. "That man has probably ordered broken kneecaps in the name of Andrew Jackson," she goes on.

"Well...mine have been wearing down slowly since February, anyway."

"Cole..." The way it balances on her tongue as she exhales it, that one syllable is heavy with a million things, as if it isn't a broken piece of who I am. "If anathing ever happened to you..."

"That's not even my name," I finally blurt out to someone in Sunset Beach.

"Wha...it's not? You made up St. John _and_ Cole too?"

"No. Cole is just the only part that's salvageable."

"I had no idea. Does Caitlin-"

"No," I sigh.

"It can't be all that bad."

I hate it now more than ever, knowing the circumstances of my birth, and...for _other _reasons. "It's...Bertrand Coleman Grégoire Deschanel."

I fully expect a silky laugh, and I get just that. "Oh, Cole. That is preposterous. One of your middle names is _Gregory?"_

"No, it's _Grégoire,_" I over-pronounce.

"Well, in spite of your reservations, I think the whole lot is very arresting...albeit in a 19th century sort of way. I guess this means that my revenge for 'Ollie' will be calling you 'Bertie.'"

My heart reaches into my throat as my eyes trace the cracks in the pavement. "As horrifying as that is, it...means a lot. I never had a nickname. They weren't Grandmother's thing. She didn't even want a nickname for 'grandmother'...obviously."

Her sigh pops my ear through the receiver. "That _woman- _and I use the term feather lightly_- _is...oh my God!"

"What?" I gasp. All that flashes through my head is Gregory before her on the sidewalk, a laundromat photo in his bony fingers. "What's wrong?"

"I felt it," she laughs. "The quickening! The baby's first little flutter. This is the earliest I've ever felt it!"

"Can I try?" I ask, then curse myself for sounding about eight. "I mean, do you think it'll do it again...sometime?"

"You wouldn't be able to feel it unless you were Aquaman, you goof," she chuckles. "It's so deep inside, almost undetectable, and still...quite a confirmation of life."

Letting out my breath does nothing for the pressure in my chest, the ridiculous amount of warmth washing over me. "...You're beautiful, Olivia. I've never even told you so. That should be a felony."

"Maybe you haven't said it aloud...but you've told me. Cole...there are things you need to know. Just in case."

"In case what?"

"Dr. Robinson isn't sure this pregnancy will be kind to me."

The alley starts to compress me, brick by brick. "Olivia, no."

"Sh-sh. Please listen, darling. There was a time, very recently...that the memory of your lips made me cringe. That filled me with so much relief, until I realized...that I cringed _because_ it was only a memory."

"...you're killing me. Why are you saying all this on the phone?"

"Because it's easier," she sniffs. "Because in person, we can't keep our mouths apart long enough to say anathing. I didn't even know your name."

"...tell me where you are."

"Not until I say this." The pause between us is rich with little sounds. Crackles. Hesitant breathing. "I was destined to meet you. If we hadn't met in that cave, we would've met on the street, or the pier, or been introduced by my own daughter. It would've happened despite who we are and because of it. I had to learn to love someone selflessly, without one thought of what I could gain from it. That's what saved me. I...Ijustadoreyou," she whispers, "and not in that starry-eyed way of someone you've charmed. It's the way of someone who knows Bertrand. A beautiful fool who thinks much less of himself than he puts on...and has a massive heart. That man is no thief. You're only Bertrand with me."

I open my mouth and nothing comes out for a moment. My jaw rattles. Her words still riding on my breath as I try to find my body, carve out my voice box. Nothing.

"Bertie?...Are you there?..."

Finally.

"...Do you know those few seconds, at the grotto...when you first walk through the cleft in the rocks, and you can't see anything at all? And then you come to the spot where the moonlight breaks in...and everything takes shape, and you know you're not lost." I close my eyes, grateful she can't see me. I feel about a hundred years old in body, compared to this clumsy young soul. "That was when I first saw you, Ollie. That was my legend. That was _'God, I love this girl.'"_

She makes a tiny sound. Maybe she feels the quickening again, that little extension of me than can always reach her. "...what have we done, dear heart...what are we doing?"

"This is crazy."

"It's self-destructive."

"Excruciating."

"Where are you?"

"I'll come to you." Gravity. There were no tides in the Pacific until she came to California.

"Side Street, darling."

"I love you," I sigh, kissing the pinholes on the phone like an idiot. "I'll be there in two seconds."

I don't get to one. My phone is pitched from my ear as something black and musty goes over my head, a needle jabs my arm that makes the world start to slur until I can't comprehend it any longer.

* * *

My eyes slump open, one heavy struggle that leads to another. I try to find my arms and legs, but they're bound tightly to my chair. "...side street," I feel marbling in my mouth through the haze. I finally make out the dinginess of a warehouse, and a man with black hair flopping in his blue eye.

"Afternoon, sunshine," Eddie smiles. "Or should I say _ey up!_ 'Cause apparently you understand British, but not English. When I said 'steal the Deschanel jewels', that didn't mean _take your lover to the fucking gynecologist._"

My eyes widen, an instant pain tunneling through my head. "How do you-"

"Fehh, how do you know about thehh?" he mimics in a wretched voice. "For the last time: private, investigator, bitch. I saw you leaving South Bay and thought, 'Well, that doesn't seem conducive to anything I need.' Since I can hack into a hospital database faster than you can get kidnapped, I found an _Olivia Cole _on the roster. Piece of advice: an _alias_ shouldn't be the combined first names of the two backstabbers. Not very discreet."

I close my eyes in relief. He's not putting two and two together about the baby.

"Now, for the life of me, I can't figure out such a glaring detour from the task at hand. Especially when the woman's been getting more breast exams lately than she'd ever need."

"...you gave me a deadline." Behind my eyes is a looping image of Olivia waiting on the sidewalk, rubbing the back of her neck, glancing at her watch. _Ijustadoreyou, I justadoreyou._

"Didn't you ever have a teacher that told you deadlines aren't an invitation for procrastination? Oh, that's right. You just fucked your teachers and got straight A's. By the way...I can also turn back the deadline."

There's a trench-coated man in the corner of the warehouse with long brown hair, the smoke from a cigarette twisting from his mouth. The muscle of the operation, I decide, considering Connors' narrow frame.

"I think it's time I introduced you to Mastiff," Eddie says.

"Mastiff?" I snicker, a little uninhibited in my grogginess. "What kind of...80's wrestler name is that?"

He just keeps smoking his cigarette.

Connors grins. "It's sort of a waste of time to make colorful jabs at a sociopath," he whispers.

I swallow hard, Adam's apple pared by heart. "I'm curious. How is holding me hostage gonna get you the jewels any faster? What are you gonna do, beat me up? Break the hand that feeds you?"

"Now, would I do a thing like that to someone who's lead such a traumatic existence? God, I can't imagine what you went through when your dressage horse had a bad mane day. It just gives me the chills."

My weighted eyes don't need much help narrowing, staring him down. "What is your deal?...This isn't just about the jewels. There's no way. This is personal...but I don't have a damn clue why you hate me so much."

"Hate is such an ugly word. There are things I like about you, Cole. Your imagination, for instance. The fantastic little tale you tell yourself that AJ Deschanel was a fearless explorer...and you were his only bastard son."

My mouth falls slowly open.

He chuckles under his breath. "I might not be a ringer for Armando the First...but there are definite similarities between me and the Second...don't you think?"

The flash in his blue eyes drills into my stomach. "...no...no, you're full of it."

"Oh, I'm full of it, alright...of Deschanel blood. You see, once upon a slut, Junior had a grand old time with a woman named Misty Connors...but I never knew that until she was on her death bed a month ago. She finally hacked up that little gem of information. Lung cancer. Oxygen in her nose and a cigarette still dangling from her lips. _Still._ I don't know how she didn't blow up. She lived poor and died poor in Long Beach, and he wanted nothing to do with her. You can guess how that influenced her opinion of Edward."

"...I-I'm sor-"

"_Don't_," he hisses. "You have no idea what it was like. Maybe if Mom had opened her ulcered little mouth sooner..._I _could've been the one Del delivered to the palace. Once I knew who I was, I had to have those jewels. I'm the first born, after all...and then I found out about you. What were the chances that the lesser chip off the block was a professional cat burglar? I was the one who convinced Gregory to let me keep tabs on you. For his daughter's sake, of course."

I swallow a knife turned sideways, contemplating this livid half of me. Brothers are supposed to catch frogs together. "Listen...the evidence locker plan isn't gonna work. In three weeks, the jewels will be out of probate. Just three weeks. I could steal them from Gregory's safe in five seconds."

"No. Deal. I'm not gonna wait any longer for my birthright...and _you_...are gonna work like you never have in your life. It's not like I didn't give you enough motivation."

The flash in his eyes suddenly makes Grandmother's most treasured photo of my father hammer at my skull. The hair, the chin, the mouth. He looks more like him than I do. "We're brothers, Eddie."

"Shut _up!_" he growls. "Don't try that Kevin Costner Robin Hood shit on me." He turns around. "Mastiff...you know how I feel about ashes. You better be using an ashtray."

"Don't have one," he says in unbroken monotone.

"Then we'll just have to use this cute little Pillsbury poke-hole in Cole's face."

I should've kept my mouth shut. "No."

Mastiff pinches the cigarette tight with his thumb and index finger, laughing low as he crosses the room. "Sweet."

"No, no, no, please! You don't have t-"

"Don't worry, Cole," Eddie says, "it's only cosmetic. I'm sure you'll make up for it with all your _substance._ I even brought some appropriate music to drown out any...discomfort," he says, crouching down to a boom box. "Gentlemen, the incomparable Simon and Garfunkel."

"No!" I struggle violently against the duct tape on my wrists and legs, my chair slamming down on its back to the sound of blaring acoustic guitars. My whole body retches at the thought of having to _explain_ the wound to Olivia, more than anything. They stand over me in delight, the blasting music devouring my cry of "I'll get you the jewels _tonight!_" All they see is my mouth moving.

_And here's to you, Mrs. Robinson._

Mastiff takes a long drag. Eddie vises my face in his hands as the dimple swallows the head of the Marlboro, all twelve hundred degrees of it. My howl is lost in my own pounding eardrums, as if underwater, curdling no one's blood but mine.

"That was just a little conditioning," a muddled Connors says as the music dies down. "Disobeying, bad. Compliance, good." All I can do is twitch beneath tears, knife-sweat and jerks of breathing, hopelessly Bertrand in every way. They must be able to see my teeth through this hole, the pain begging my eyes to roll back and take me anywhere else. He stoops down, a blur of icy eyes and flying spittle. "How about we forget Gregory, and talk about what I'M gonna do to Olivia? You get that collection in my hands tonight, or I swear to God...there'll be a lot more separating you two than time. I'm talking Lady Richards underneath my car with her hundred-proof blood eating a nice pothole in the road. You understand?"

Olivia Death Image number four, if you're counting. My head makes a thrashing movement that might be a nod. _Every way you look at this, you lose._

* * *

I don't register much of how I end up under the pier. A vague awareness of boxcutters slicing away the duct tape, the sack going back over my head. I can't touch my blistering face without aftershocks of nausea and boiled tears. I bury my head in my knees and cry in a way that's completely foreign to me. A primal, guttural, groaning for air, choking on snot sort of cry. A cry that a boy with no parents socks away for a lifetime. One that Grandmother never allowed and Elaine would have, with a waffle iron grasp and hushed words.

In my head I make it to Side Street, over and over again. Kiss Olivia's eyes, let her steal all my breath until I'm flat on the concrete.

She was right. I'm not a thief.

I can't pinpoint the exact moment of Cole St. John's death. Maybe it was under her heavy bed frame, or in the stifling heat of the Wash n' Go laundromat. Maybe the hospital, when we stopped protecting what our hearts did in each other's presence. This desire...this ferocious desire has turned Olivia into the only thing I'm capable of stealing.

I bury my head in my knees again, with no scalding water left to cry. There's no way I'll get the jewels by tonight. I'd have to hold a knife to my sister's throat and force her to open the evidence locker.

Do I have any other choice?

A cancer swells in me again. Paula. The one true sibling I have. I feel the recognition of my own face in hers, the unquestioning love in her eyes. I think of what it would do to our mother if her risen angel boy threatened to harm _anyone._

Then again, my mother _fired_ into someone's chest for me.

Like mother, like son.

I think of my child fluttering in liquid weightlessness. Tadcole, my inner third grader names him. He makes me feel so much like a child myself, and yet the most vicious bear standing ten feet on two legs.

Forgive me, sister.

* * *

I knock at the door of her one-room loft, a band-aid over the cigarette burn. I almost passed out in my bathroom when I cleaned it with motel soap. Gagged to the bones as the soft, harmless gauze pad made contact with the raw flesh.

I can do this.

Paula's face lights up as the mini-blind on the door flips open, but her eyes widen when she opens it. "Oh my gosh, what happened to your face?"

It's not exactly a small band-aid. I can't meet her eyes. "Believe it or not, I'm...a master butcher when it comes to shaving."

"Oh, kiddo," she sighs. "Jeez, it's not your fault. You never had someone to teach you. We could compare lots of notes on deadbeat dads. How about over coffee?"

"I'd like that," I shudder as she pulls me in. I have to do this.

"Are you sure you're okay? You look really run down."

"It's just been one of those days." As if anybody gets blackmailed, finds out they're related to the blackmailer, gets disfigured by a guy named Mastiff and professes their love for their expecting married lover all in the same one.

"At least you have plenty of nagging women in your life now, to get you to take care of yourself," she says, yanking the coffee pot out of a crowded corner of the counter. "I'm so glad you felt comfortable enough to just drop by. I've been driving everybody crazy -especially Ricardo- like, agonizing and overanalyzing if I should give you space, or tackle you with hugs...there are no how-to manuals on dead brothers coming back, you know?"

"Did Ricardo warn you not to trust me?" I barely hear myself ask...reaching for my pocket.

"C'mon, give him a little more credit than that," she scoffs, her back to me. My opportunity. "Everybody told me to just go with my gut. So I went overboard." She opens a kitchen cupboard and pulls out a wrapped present. "Ta-da!" She pushes it to me on the table. "Happy belated birthday, you unpredictable little Aquarius."

I sink back into the chair and try to pretend we're not related, to erase everything from my head but Olivia's two heartbeats. One look at Paula's trusting face and I tremble with recognition. The jawline, the hair, the arch of the brow. I am in there, with the exception of this scar. The cigarette burn reaches inside me as my hands tentatively pick at the shiny paper.

It's a framed photo of two children, a girl and a boy, her arm around his shoulder. "Oh my God...? It's us. How can that be?"

"My friend Mark is unbelievable at graphic design. See," she points, "He took that Easter '79 picture you gave Mom, and I gave him one of me in my funky Sunday best. He superimposed them, did all the effects and the shading. Genius, huh? Ricardo thinks it's kinda uncanny...it made Mom start bawling, and...I'm sorry if it makes you sad, too. That's not my intention at all. I just couldn't resist being able to rewrite history the way it should have been."

I want the knife in my pocket to cut my femoral artery, to lie on the loft floor dying while I tell her what I've done. "If only, Paula," I whisper. "It wouldn't be like this."

"Like what? What's wro..." I can tell by the gasp in her throat and the cold air stabbing against my cheek that the band-aid is hanging off. "Cole! Shaving nick, my ass!" She holds my face in both hands. "That's a cigarette burn!"

I can't stomach telling her where it came from, let alone coercing her into getting me the jewels. "Paula, don't-"

"Do you _know_ who you're talking to? I go on a million domestic calls, Cole, I know a damn cigarette burn when I see one! You need a doctor, a skin graft, not a ten cent band-aid! Who did this? The way you're trying to sweep it under the rug, I'm almost convinced it was Caitlin! Is this all part of her new rock star image- abusing her boyfriend?"

I let out a wilted laugh that sounds absolutely pitiful and shaken. "Do you know what I'd give for an _After School Special_ kind of problem like that?"

Tears well up in her eyes. "Tell me. I was supposed to protect you...your whole life. Now I'm a cop and I still can't protect you? Do you have any idea how that feels? There's nothing you could say that would change anything!"

"I wouldn't even know where to start."

Her cell phone chirps loudly. "You've got exactly one minute to figure it out." She throws the phone to her ear, her hair flying in disarray. "What!...Oh, I'll give you 'some greeting.'...I'll tell you what my problem is. My brother is sitting at the kitchen table with a horrible burn he tried to fix with a little Elaine Stevens ingenuity, that's what!...Don't be an asshole, Ricardo!...I'm not on call, what could possibly be...what? When?...Oh God...I don't believe it. I'll be right down..." She covers her eyes. "I don't believe it. How many murders in just two months...?"

The growing blur around me stems from the intense throbbing in my cheek, a branding iron wrapped in frostbite. The pain radiates up to my eye, making just the soft light in the apartment unbearable. Behind the sawing in my brain, I see O.D.I. # 5.

I feel my head hit the table. "Cole!" She raises me back up, her hands at my temples. "Oh God, little brother. Just like Mom. Just like her. Hiding pain like an animal." She holds me in her arms, shaking her head against my shoulder.

"...paula..."

"Don't say another word until you take a damn Vicodin," she says, running for the bathroom. "Or three!"

"...who was killed?" a gurgling sound that might be my voice calls after her. "Who was killed, paula..."

"It's no one you would know," she says, the pill bottle shaking in her hands. "It's my old partner, Eddie Connors...someone shot him."

I just about swallow my tonsils. The palm of my hand is blank. The sensation in my chest isn't surprise, or relief, or the emptiness of everything never to be realized. It's the sickening, breathless realization that there's an apartment to search, a photo of two lovers to be placed in a plastic bag. A beautiful picture of motive that will make Torres turn to us, rigid as a Pointer.

* * *

A/N: Thanks to all of you who are hanging in with this story. I don't post chapters in a very timely manner, but each one is made with love. Maybe _too_ much. ;) Thanks for your support


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